Loft-Style Apartments For Railway Arches

Dean NicholasLoft-Style Apartments For Railway ArchesImpression of Deptford station, featuring a dangerously low-flying aircraftThe flats may be popular with folk who disdain furniture

Let's hear it for our Victorian forebears: the railway arches they laid across the capital are still in good nick and have been creatively repurposed into offices, restaurants, galleries and more. Now a design firm has revealed images of yet another use: as loft-style apartments.

London Original Loft (or, er, Lol — perhaps they're just taking us for a ride?) is a proposal by CSR Architects. They plan to install tilted skylights to let daylight through, and retain the interior exposed brick for a gritty urban aesthetic.

Lol is at the proposal stage right now, with no fixed plans to go ahead. Whether London's empty arches, often used by homeless people as makeshift residences, should be converted into luxury dwellings for the well-off is another matter entirely.